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José Quiroga †Professor, Spanish and Comparative Literature

Biography

Jose Quiroga is Professor of Comparative Literature. He also teaches at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and is part of the advisory board of the Studies in Sexualities Program. After receiving his B.A. in English and Latin American Literature from Boston University and his Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University, he taught at The George Washington University before joining Emory in 2002. Quiroga has held visiting professorships at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Berkeley, the University of Maryland, and the Universidad de la Pampa (Santa Rosa, Argentina). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his areas of specialization include Hispanic Caribbean and Latin/o American Gender, Sexuality and Queer Studies; Modern Poetry and Poetics in the Americas, and Cultural Studies (Film, Music, Performance).

Quiroga is author of Cuban Palimpsests (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America (NYU Press, 2000), Understanding Octavio Paz (1999), Sexualidades en disputa (with Daniel Balderston) (Buenos Aires, 2005), Law of Desire:  A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009), and Mapa Callejero, Cronicas sobre lo gay desde América Latina (Buenos Aires, Eterna Cadencia, 2010).  His current book project, "The Book of Flight" investigates the political relationship between dissidence and escape in Cold War and Contemporary Latino America. He is completing a co-authored book with Francisco Morán, The Havana Reader (Duke UP).

Prior to his joining the Emory faculty, he had co-directed (with Prof. Maria Carrión) one of the first Cuba Study Abroad Programs in the U.S. At Emory, Quiroga originated and directed the Argentina Study Abroad Program (2004-2009) He has been Department Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Director of Graduate Studies. He is a member of the Postcolonial Studies Working Group and convenes the Cultures in Motion Initiative, which has co-sponsored Comparative Caribbeans: an Interdisciplinary Conference (2011) and the visits of Danny LaFerriere (Haiti), Roberto Zurbano, Norge Espinosa and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo (Cuba), and Urayoán Noel and Gianina Braschi (Puerto Rico) among others. Quiroga served as a member of the Board for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS-CUNY-NY), and in Washington, DC he was the Co-Chair of Gente Latina de Ambiente, which engaged in grassroots organizing and AIDS related work while providing  health and social services to the Latina/o Gay and Lesbian Community. He also helped supervise the Cultura es Vida AIDS Prevention Program under the sponsorship of National Latino Lesbians and Gays (LLEGO).

Quiroga is also co-editor (with LIcia Fiol-Matta, NYU) of the New Directions in Latino American Cultures an academic series at at Palgrave / MacMillan which has published over 30 volumes on topics such as popular culture, chicanx sexualities, bilingualism, and psychoanalytic studies by scholars such as Ruben Gallo, Raquel Z. Rivera, Mabel Moraña, Idelber Avelar, Doris Sommer, Jacqueline Loss, Rafael Rojas, Silvio Torres-Saillant, and others. He was part of the American Studies Association Organizing Committee for "The Fun and the Fury" conference (Los Angeles, 2014), has served at the MLA Delegate Assembly and is a former Board member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CUNY).

Publications

The Havana Reader: Culture Society and Politics (Forthcoming); Law of Desire: A Queer Film Classic (2009); Cuban Palimpsests (2005); Sexualidades en disputa (with Daniel Balderston) (2005); Tropics of Desire (2001); Understanding Octavio Paz (2000); Co-editor, 'New Directions in Latino American Cultures' and 'New Concepts in Latino American Cultures" (Palgrave).